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Part I The Nature and Setting of Police Administration

Learning Objectives

Identify several organizational environments.

Discuss how police departments respond to their organizational environments.

Distinguish why a police department must be an open system and respond to its environment.

Understand the nature of politics and how politics affects the police organization.

Identify a community’s power structure and its implications for the police manager.

Evaluate the relationship between the police and community, and understand the barriers to developing better relationships.

Discuss community policing and its ability to improve police-community relationships. Discuss the role of the media in police administration and how the police executive can develop better relations with the media.

Understand the meaning and implication of cultural diversity within the context of policing.

The Environment of Government

Reactions to the Environment

• The theory of uncertainty and dependence – Organizations must maintain a balance throughout changes between organizational outcomes and environmental expectations.

– Organizations are dependent on the environment and citizen support.

• The theory of natural selection – Some organizations react to their environments more efficiently than others.

– Organizations that don’t efficiently meet environmental demands are eliminated.

Interaction between Environment and Organization

• “Closed” System Model – Organizations are insulated and closed off from their environments.

• “Open” System Model – Organizations exist in a complex environment they can’t shut out.

Closed Systems

• Planning, decision-making, and day-to-day operations are conducted without regard to the environment.

• Belief that a department’s agenda should be set by its own administrators, not the community – Results in isolationism, ineffectiveness, and sometimes failure on the part of the police department • Focus on traditionalism: how things have always been done – Reduces agency’s ability to cope with changes in the community © 2011 Delmar, Cengage Learning

Open Systems

Police and Political/Governmental Interaction

• Separation of Powers – Government is divided into three branches: 1. Legislative 2. Executive 3. Judicial • Federalism – Three-tiered form of government providing checks and balances: 1. Federal 2. State 3. Local © 2011 Delmar, Cengage Learning

Forms of City Government

• Council-Manager Form – Separates politics from administration • Mayor-Council Form – Strong mayor configuration: mayor is primary administrator exercising control over departments – Weak mayor configuration: mayor’s power is limited, in that policy making and administration rests with the council • City Commission Form – Each member of the council also serves as the head of one or more of the city’s departments © 2011 Delmar, Cengage Learning

Three Types of Municipal Executives

• Misfeasors – Exert a great deal of effort to become involved and get things going • Nonfeasors – Frequently abdicate their authority, choosing to do little or nothing to avoid upsetting community leaders • Malfeasors – Promote corrupt practices or allow them to exist within government © 2011 Delmar, Cengage Learning

Relationships between Municipal and Police Executives

• Team Approach – Police and government executives form an active partnership and collaborate in much of the police decision and policy making • Professional Autonomy Approach – Police executive has virtual autonomy over police formulation – Police and government executives negotiate budget issues • Political Activist Approach – Governmental executives perceive themselves as the primary law enforcement executive and dictate policy to police chiefs © 2011 Delmar, Cengage Learning

The Community Power Structure and the Police

• The community exerts a variety of influences on its police department.

•

Community power

: the politics, decision-making, and other processes that determine community direction • • Community power structure is dependent on variables.

Pluralism

Threats to Police —Community Relationships

Evolution of Community Policing

• Police-community relations programs of the 1950s and 1960s • Team policing strategies of the 1970s • Increase in citizen fear of crime and drugs that began to dominate public policy formation in the 1980s © 2011 Delmar, Cengage Learning

Community Disorder and Crime

• Broken windows – Deterioration of neighborhood quality of life begins with minor neglect and disorder problems.

– Unchecked minor problems worsen over time.

– The best way to attack crime is to deal with minor problems before they become major problems.

Themes of Community Policing

1. The police should be

accountable

to the community.

2. They should be

connected

and integrated into the community on a personal level.

3. They should be oriented to

solving general problems

instead of focusing on incidents.

What Is Community Policing?

• A cooperative effort to substantively solve crime and disorder problems • Community Partnerships – Efforts by the police to work with the community to solve common problems • Problem Solving – Act of identifying problems that are issues with the police and public, and attempting to solve them rather than merely respond to them © 2011 Delmar, Cengage Learning

The Media: The Police Department’s Window to the World

• Media characterizations of police influence public perceptions and expectations of the police.

• Members of media consider themselves to be the “fourth branch of government.” – Dispensing truth and reporting the news – Constructing a “social reality” of crime and government – News may be “packaged” so that sales are maximized • Police and the media depend on each other.

• Police and the media sometimes face conflict.

Managing the Police-Media Relationship

Assign a public information officer from the police to deal with the media.

Encourage reporters to participate in police ride-alongs.

Train police officers in media relations.

Give reporters free access to all departmental records that are legally available to them.

Conduct regular meetings between police and media.

Have police officials participate in broadcasts to open communications with the public.

Issue press credentials to give legitimate reporters access to information.

Train public information officer in conflict management.

Cultural Diversity

• The number and population of various cultural and ethnic groups residing in a community • Vast social, political, and economic differences among the many subcultures in our society • Disadvantaged cultures view the police as an arm of the dominant class with the primary function of repressing them.

Value Statements of Community Policing

1. Protecting constitutional rights and democratic values.

2. Engaging a wide range of police resources to further the ends of crime reduction.

3. Engaging in crime prevention.

4. Developing an understanding of neighborhood crime problems and the corresponding concerns of citizens.

5. Conducting themselves with integrity and honesty.

6. Soliciting citizen input into the police enterprise.

7. Encouraging and developing community partnerships for improving the community.